sters, and a licentious court, and they are due to the earnestness
and vigor of the great body of the English people, qualities which have
remained unchanged through every national vicissitude or success. While
Pepys and Grammont supply full details of the moral degeneration which
weakened and debased the highest ranks of society, the sound morality,
steady industry, and progressive nature of the nation are to be seen in
the journal of the good Evelyn. His character and occupations, as well
as those of his friends, offset the coarse tastes and worthless lives
which brought the time into discredit. To the prevailing disregard of
the marriage tie may well be contrasted the happiness of Evelyn's
domestic life. His daughter, of whom he has left a beautiful
description, was endowed with an elevation of character, a charm of
disposition, and a purity of thought admirable in any age, and it
cannot be doubted that she had many contemporary parallels.

[Footnote 84: Destouches, "Glorieux," v. 3.]

[Footnote 85: Act ii, sc. 1.]

[Footnote 86: "Literature of Europe," vol. 4, chap. 6, sec. 2-47.]

II

With the pensions and fashions which were sent across the Channel from
the court of Louis XIV, came a curious species of fiction which had a
temporary vogue in England. Gomberville, Scuderi, and Calprenede had
created the school of Heroic Romance by the publication of those
monumental works which the French not inaptly termed "les romans de
longue haleine." This was the bulky but enervated descendant of
chivalric and pastoral romance. The tales of chivalry and of pastoral
life had their _raison d'etre_. The feudal knighthood found in the
tournaments, in the adventures of knight-errantry, and in the
supernatural agencies which filled their volumes of romance, the
reflection of their own aspirations and beliefs. They admired in the
ideal characters of Charlemagne and Arthur the qualities most valued
among themselves. Martial glory was to them the chief object of life;
love was simply the reward of valor. The pastoral romance followed in
less warlike times. Its subject was love; and that passion was usually
described amidst humble and peaceful shepherds, where its strength and
charm could develop more fully than amidst scenes of war and tumult.
Both the chivalric and the pastoral romance were the embodiment of
ideals which in turn represented contemporary tastes. But heroic
romance, although it shared some of the characteristi